Tears stung her eyes again. ‘I just want us to have a family.’
‘We are a family. You and me. I don’t need a child, Colette.Quite frankly, if trying for one is going to do this to you, then I don’t want it at all.’ He hugged her tightly. ‘All I want is you. I’d do anything for you.’
She couldn’t believe what he was saying.What about all the talk about family? A big family, with lots of children? Is he really willing to give that up?
‘What about everything we talked about?’ she said, still stunned by what her husband had said. It didn’t make sense in her mind.
‘You’re the one who always wanted a family, really. You wanted one, so I wanted one. But if we can’t have one, it’s fine, too. We don’t need it. We have each other, don’t we?’
Colette didn’t know how to process this. Believing Ed would be so easy. And perhaps letting go of having a child was an easy solution, but it wasn’t something she believed she could do. She wanted a child. The desire was deep down in her soul.
She’d taken care of her nieces from time to time, even as she watched Noelle’s twins grow from a distance. Among Ed’s siblings’ children she was a favourite aunt, but that was it. An aunt. Not a mother.
‘Always a godmother, never a mother,’ she mimicked bitterly as her fingers played absently against Ed’s back.
‘There’s nothing wrong with that either,’ he said. ‘You are so great with children. Everyone knows that. But maybe it’s just not meant to be.’
‘Don’t say that,’ Colette responded as she pushed herself from his arms. ‘Don’t ever say that. I know I’m supposed to be a mother.’
‘Colette …’ Ed protested.
‘No,’ she interrupted. ‘I don’t accept that. I won’t.’
She rushed from the bed and over to the bathroom before Ed could reach her, slamming the door behind her and locking it. She could hear him at the door asking to be let in as she sat on the bath and once again began to cry.
How could Ed even say that to her? He knew what she wanted. He knew her heart. How could he just tell her it wasn’t for her? She hugged her knees as his voice became more urgent.
‘Colette, let me in. Let me in now. Don’t do this. I’m sorry. Just open up.’
‘Just go away,’ she shouted back.
‘Colette, please. This is ridiculous,’ Ed retorted. ‘You aren’t a teenager. This isn’t the way to handle problems. You can’t hide away and expect the truth to just vanish. You have to face it. I know it isn’t easy. I know it’s not what you want, but you have to see what this is doing to you. What it’s doing to us.’ Pain was in everything he said as his tone softened. ‘You think I want to say this to you? I don’t feel good about doing it, especially now, but I have to. I can’t watch you rip yourself apart anymore. I can’t watch you blame yourself for something that isn’t your fault. It just isn’t happening and we have to accept that.’
More tears erupted as she listened. This might be tearing them apart, but she couldn’t let go of it.
No matter how easy it was for Ed to get past this and decide a life without children was OK, it wasn’t for Colette. This was her dream.
Exhausted now, she slid onto the floor, resting her head on her arms as Ed continued to knock on the door.
‘Just go away,’ she pleaded softly. ‘Please go away.’
Chapter 25
Now
It was dinnertime when Kim and her family got back to the Excelsior from the train station.
Lily was hungry and cranky, making eating in the formal hotel dining room an ill-advised option.
Their daughter was small but her lungs were mighty, and when she was upset they resounded everywhere. She wasn’t at all badly behaved but when she was off-form she became very miserable and needed more attention.
Gabriel settled her back in the suite while Kim talked again on her phone outside on the terrace.
Hank had called back with some more information on the plagiarism claim.
‘I just spoke to the lawyer. This person claims some of the affirmations were her mother’s. They were shared throughout the family for generations. She says you stole them.’
Kim’s heart hammered as she tried to get a handle on this. ‘Well, if it’s family stuff, did she give any idea of how she thinks I supposedly came by this information to steal it?’
